Encyclopedia

You are here

ShulamitLapid

One of Israel’s best-known contemporary writers of fiction, drama and poetry, Shulamit Lapid was born in Tel Aviv in 1934. Her father, David Giladi (b. 1909), was one of the founders of the daily Ma’ariv newspaper. She studied Middle Eastern studies and English literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1956 to 1957, but did not complete a degree. She is married to journalist Joseph (Tommy) Lapid (b. 1931), who from 1999 to 2005 was a member of Knesset (Israeli legislature). They have a daughter, Meirav, and a son, Yair, who is a journalist and a popular talk-show host. Their oldest daughter, Michal, was killed in a car accident in 1984.

After several collections of short stories, Lapid first gained readers’ attention with her popular novel, Gai oni, which was the first Israeli book to be labelled “feminist.” Its feminism is, however, displaced, the action taking place in Palestine of the 1890s, thereby establishing a precedent in Israeli fiction for masking feminist protest by historical distancing. Framed in a narrative about first-settlers struggling with a harsh motherland, in a culture that kept gender roles distinct and separate, Lapid’s heroine, Fania, stands out in her attempt to cross boundaries. She is both mother and merchant, venturing out on the road alone, even defending herself against armed Arab horsemen when attacked.

Yet at the end of a romance plot that borders on the melodramatic, Lapid does not allow Fania to go it alone, despite her “androgynous” qualities and her long training toward independence. This ambivalence about feminist liberation was also reflected at the time by the author’s public pronouncements: she did not consider herself a feminist, nor did she believe in “women writing” per se. At the same time, she has mostly limited herself to “women’s subjects.” Lapid modified her non-feminist position in 1987, when she participated in an international conference of women writers organized by the Israel Women’s Network and held in Jerusalem. Except for one historical novel, Ka-heres ha-nishbar [As a Broken Vessel], all Lapid’s subsequent work features female protagonists. Her first play, Rekhush natush [Abandoned Property], explored the psychological dynamics between mother and daughters in a broken family on the margins of the social system, while her second play, Rehem pundaki [Surrogate Mother], engaged the contemporary issue of surrogate mothering by deftly rewriting the biblical model (Abraham, Sarah and Hagar). By 1989, in an interview outside Israel, this “happily married mother” (by her own admission) described herself as “small, delicate, and becoming more and more aggressive” at her “ripe fifty-four.”

By the end of the decade, Lapid had “resolved” her ambivalence by shifting from the “canonic” historical narrative and the female euphoric text (the romantic betrothal plot) to a different genre—the spinster detective story. In a series of popular thrillers (1989–2000), all set in a contemporary provincial town (Beer Sheva), she has constructed a “New Israeli Woman,” a lower middle-class journalist whose first priority is work and for whom love is divorced from matrimony. Thirty-some years old and single, Lizzie Badihi, who is proud of her “professionalism” and work ethic, is not a descendant of the “New Hebrew Woman” of the Zionist revolution (Fania and her like); rather, she is a throwback to the turn-of-the-century spinster detective of English literature. In Lapid’s version of this genre, motherhood is rejected first hand (“I have seen my sisters,” Lizzie explains) and masculine autonomy is appropriated without any equivocation. The first novel’s final question, repeated twice, “What do you want, Lizzie?,” reads like a wry parody of Freud’s notorious question, “What does a woman want?” What this woman wants is apparently work and a new kind of romance (male-modeled, of course: no strings attached …). The latter makes its appearance only at the close of the story: a tawny, handsome, rich and worldly divorcé, whose timely offered “information” rescues Lizzie from the imminent danger of losing her job. It is hard to determine whether the simplicity with which sexual difference is overcome in these plots is an indicator of naive conceptualization, or of a projection of a collective fantasy. Whatever the case, it is clear that the feminist romance produced here is an essentialist mirror image of its masculinist counterpart.

The same holds good for some of Lapid’s later short stories in which romance is replaced by aggression. A straightforward reversal of roles in a violent rape scene, for example, is the subject of “Nehitat oness” (published in English as “The Bed,” but better rendered as “Forced Entry”). The painful experience of what one might call “counter rape” is focalized through the eyes of the victim—a young man whose bewildered incomprehension is utterly ignored by his female attacker. Gender difference is again turned upside down: here the female grotesquely “redeems” her alterity by donning the dark face of masculine subjectivity, aggression.

While her earlier stories (Mazal dagim [Pisces] in 1969 and five later collections) were much more traditional, her recent work is marked by both social and feminist consciousness, e.g. the plays mentioned above, and the 1998 novel Ezel Babou [Chez Babou], in which she tackles the painful topic, rarely addressed in Israeli literature, of the foreign, mostly illegal, laborers and the subhuman conditions of their work and life. Lapid has also published poems and children’s books.

In 2005 Lapid published Havat ha-almot (The Damsels’ Farm), a sequel to Gai oni, which has as its central character the daughter of Fania and Yehiel. The book deals with the Second Aliyah and the hardships its members encountered. Lapid introduces into her narrative some of the historical figures of the time. Among them are the feminist pioneers Hannah Maisel, Sarah Malkhin and Miriam Baratz.

From 1985 to 1987, Lapid served as the first woman elected to chair the Hebrew Writers’ Association. She has won both the Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature (1987) and the International Theater Institute Award (1988).

Gerald, I remember your aunt Helen quite well. I met her for the first time in Baia Mare, Romania, in 1964 where she was visiting us from Budapest, when Dudi was the Israeli Ambassador in Hungary. In September 1966 I was visiting them in Budapest, after that I met her a few times in Israel between 1976-78 (I moved to Israel in January 1976). She tragically passed away at a young age in 1979 or 1980. I was in the army when she passed away, so I couldnt go to her funeral, but I was present at her funeral stone inauguration. She was one of the nicest persons I ever knew. Helen had told me she had a brother or sister (I don't quite remember) in the US who had a daughter. Helen had intentions to introduce me to her niece, who is or your cousin or your sister. That thing never materialized because of the Six Day's war in June 1967.

Reading Shulamit's excellent biography I found one small inaccuracy I would like to bring to your attention. You mention Meirav and Yair as her living children. The order they are mentioned gives the impression, that Meirav is older than Yair. The opposite is true. Yair is older than Meirav. I know that since I am Shulamit's second cousin. My father, Alexandru Klein is one of David Giladi's (born David Klein) first cousins.

Dear George, I just finished reading Tommy Lapid's biography by Yair. I know that Shulamit's family is originally from Transilvania, but the town is not mentioned. Would it be possible for you to provide this information? My family and myself are originally from Oradea

Yes, Gerald is right, but the correct spelling of the town is SzilÌÄåÁgycseh. You'll find it in a detailed map of North Western Romania South-East of Satu Mare, East North-East from Oradea under the Romanian name Cehu Silvaniei.

What else can you tell of Shulamit's family back in Transyvania? Apparently my paternal grandparents are somehow related to her mother and I'm trying to figure out exactly how. Can you shed some light on this for me?